On August 5th, 2026, AACP lost one of our dedicated and long time volunteers, Clifford Hayashi. Cliff was also an associate board member of our organization.

You may remember Cliff as the guy with all the collectables at events we would go to. Come learn more about Cliff by reading our messages.

Messages From Our Board

Cliff - thank you for your spirit and dedication.

Rayna

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I always appreciated his warmth and kindness (and his Stanford cap of course). He made the bookstore such a special place!

Pia Ceres

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Really sorry to hear about his passing. I remember he came to an APAHE (Asian Pacific Americans in Higher Education) conference a few years ago and brought a lot of his own personal items to sell. He was such a character. He was very kind and was always laughing and smiling.

Angela Zhao 

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Thank you, Cliff, for showing us how to live a life of meaning.

Harrison Zhuang

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Cliff was a one of a kind person who traveled where Japanese American history took him. He could be in the Bay Area and next week he went to Washington DC. It was hard for us to know where he would be. He talked to people who had individual stories about what they went through during the concentration camps, or their family members, and he collected and found information from yearbooks in different concentration camps.

He managed to find and sell many items he found (I do not know where he got them) at AACP events.

I hope we are able to find someone who can help us share his collection because it will be sad to have all his findings gone.

Sylvia Kataoka

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This is quite shocking news. We’re saddened to lose a longtime associate board member, who was devoted to AACP, particularly through his interest in sports, internment research, and knickknack collection. I remember how much Florence (Hongo) appreciated Clifford’s volunteering at the stores and events over the years.

Rest in peace, Clifford.

Sophie Wong

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Cliff sometimes drove us crazy with his questions, but he will be missed because he was always there and reliable for AACP.

Philip Chin

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I found Cliff to be an enigma. When he joined our group, he was associated with Stanford and had a Stanford email address. We discovered that he was an avid fan of volleyball, so much so that he was dubbed their “Super Fan.” His schedule was based around their games. He let us know he had four masters degrees, but never divulged their subjects.

Cliff loved collecting and selling items about the Japanese American experience during WWII and he'd lug a carton of artifacts to our events. He'd talk to anyone who happened by. From videos his family shared, it was clear that kids loved him and reminding me how he could talk to young children perusing our books and usually making a sale.

He took good care of his mother when her health began to decline, and although a private person, he had a good heart.

Susan Tanioka

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I’m not sure why I had to think about it, but Cliff was a good friend.

We don’t really get to know all the different aspects of a person. Everyone has parts about them that we may not know much about. We may see only the part of someone that is maybe their work life or from the perspective of a close or distant relative.

Maybe, as in the case of a writer, you read their work and you feel like you know them. If it’s someone that’s well known, you may follow them in the news and know them that way. You may even shed a tear for your favorite musician or actor when they pass away.

Since I learned of his passing, I heard people describe Cliff in all sorts of ways, using word like strange, unique, and one of a kind. I’ve even used the word quirky. Perhaps this is the reason why I had to think about what kind of a friend he was.

I’m not sure when we first met Cliff. I think he came to AACP like a lot of our volunteers – they come to our store or meet us at an event and think “this is a neat organization. I’d like to help out.” Cliff was just there one day (maybe some time in 2010) using our computers and phone as if it were his office. This was another odd thing about him – he didn’t have his own phone and computer or even a car at that time.

He would ask me all sorts of questions, often times about computers. Then one day I learned that he had an electrical engineering degree and had been a software engineer for Lockheed. I wasn’t sure if he was just testing me, but I think like a lot of people that are in the tech industry, they tend to just know a certain slice of the world and sometimes not much beyond that.

Everyone learned pretty fast that Cliff was a big Stanford sports fan (so big that someone even made a documentary about his fanaticism – “Cliff, Superfan!”). Perhaps that was another thing that I found to be a little off putting – he was a supporter of my rival’s school. Then at some point, I learned that he got his bachelor degree from Cal (he actually had three degrees from Cal and two from Stanford). From that point on, whenever someone learned about Cliff’s fanaticism for Stanford, I would usually kid Cliff about “why he couldn’t at least support one of Cal’s sports team.” He would usually answer something like, “I follow them too.”

Another thing I learned about Cliff and had sort of forgotten (since we haven’t seen much of him lately), was how much he liked learning and doing research. I can’t remember how many times I saw him doing research at the National Archives in San Bruno or the library (or even at our store), but I imagine it was just the tip of the iceberg. Perhaps this was another thing we had in common – we were both interested in history and learning about people.

One of the things that was kind of our friction point was that Cliff would always want to sell his collectables at AACP’s booths or tables at events. Not only that, he wanted a prime spot in front where people could see the items. It was kind of the swap we made for having his help at events. These collectables were also one of his ways of getting to know people. They were good conversation starters. Not only was he trying to show these items to the people that came by, he also tried to sell them to us as well (and sometimes we bought them :).

Cliff’s curiosity was sometime a bit cringe worthy as he would ask some people about “what were they” or “where they were from,” and he’d even asked questions that most people would be unwilling to ask. But he was genuinely curious about people and wanted to get to know them.

Cliff would often beat us in getting to events and this one time, he took a parking spot that was being reserved for AACP (ahead of me).

Don’t get me wrong, I think I probably didn’t really mind that much about all these things because Cliff was good company and help. Looking at old photos helped remind me of all the times that he had come out for events. I don’t think I really realized it, but Cliff’s recent absence was probably why I felt a little more stressed this year – we didn’t have his help and company.

I’m not sure if it was the last time he helped us at an event, but I remember standing back at some point and observing AACP’s crew of knowledgeable and friendly staff (Cliff was among them). At that point, I was feeling a bit of pride and thankfulness for all their help.

Cliff was the right person for AACP and, like his support for his beloved school, he helped support AACP as well.

During the last few years, we didn’t see Cliff as much. It was partly because of the pandemic and partly because of his care giving for his mother. I had assumed that his care giving duties were increasingly keeping him busy. Only did I learn after his passing that he had been fighting cancer for over a year.

Cliff, we didn’t get to say goodbye to you while you were alive.

Goodbye Cliff!

Thanks for all the help, companionship, and memories. You were a good friend.

Leonard Chan

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Please come again to this article in the coming days. We hope to post more photos of Cliff.